It was finally showtime at Easterns. Both Pitt and Wisconsin had waltzed through the tournament without much of a challenge one way or the other. Now the two best teams, both by seedings and by results, were meeting in the finals. With the wind at an all-time high, we had no idea what to expect.

Turns out, we should have expected a Hodag blowout because that is exactly what we got. The Hodags jumped out early and jumped out hard on En Sabah Nur and that eventually led to an easy victory. However, this game had more riding on it than a simple Easterns victory. The two teams had put up the VC Showcase Easterns jerseys and it was winner take all in the finals.

With only four teams left in the hunt for the Easterns title there was yet to be anything that anyone would consider a big upset. Of the four teams that were still alive, Virginia was the only one that was not a No. 1 seed in its pool and that pool was the only pool that had three teams advance to quarterfinals.

Both semifinal games seemed like they were going to be the first example of the big upset but in the end, both the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds for the tournament pulled out victories and moved on to finals. Wisconsin came out on top of Middlebury 13-9 and Pitt beat out Virginia by the same score. However, that wasn’t before the Pranksters and Night Train gave the Hodags and En Sabah Nur a good scare.

Quarterfinals had a bit of a different feel than prequarters. All four of the teams that had advanced through prequarters had advanced through dogfight games. Mostly fighting tooth and nail to advance, only to face an even tougher opponent than the round before.

Just like prequarters, we were only able to watch three of these games. Wisconsin toppled Brown by a count of 15-6. We have no further information as to the manner of method by which this happening occurred. Meanwhile, Pitt whooped Georgia, 15-5, Middlebury and Virginia both avenged Saturday losses, Middlebury over Virginia Tech 15-9 and Virginia over Cornell 14-11.

As we experienced at the Tally Classic, getting an opportunity to play under the lights is a good opportunity indeed. Four teams got that chance at Easterns but they each had something more on the line as well. Easterns was putting up two sets of 15 VC jerseys to add to the pot, one set to go to the winner of each of the games.

From pool A, Pittsburgh En Sabah Nur squared off with Ohio State Leadbelly and from pool B the Wisconsin Hodags met up with the UNCW Seamen. Pittsburgh won handily by a score of 15-8 and Wisconsin clung to an early lead to win 15-11.

Pittsburgh will be riding the No. 1 overall seed into Easterns this weekend. Aside from winning a National Championship, this type of seeding and recognition is evidence of the culmination of the rise of an Ultimate program that has been a long time coming.

A glance at En Sabah Nur’s website’s history section reveals a team that has made the trip to UPA Nationals for the last five years but missed going to Metro East Regionals only six years ago. In those five years, Pitt has never ventured past the quarterfinals, while many would consider this a frustrating experience, En Sabah Nur sees it entirely differently.

Three (nearly) full tournaments were played this weekend, in what proved to be the first weekend of the preseason that was not severely affected by inclement weather. That being said, teams attending Queen City Tuneup had to deal with snow and shortened round times while teams attending Mardi Gras had to deal with bayous encroaching into the middle of the field. Meanwhile, President’s Day frolicked out West like one would expect Californians to.

After the jump is this weekend’s recap. It may be of some interest to many of you but we are making some efforts to get in touch with the UPA, Mike Gerics and George Mason’s Ultimate program to try and sort out just what went down this last weekend. It would be somewhat of a tragedy in our opinion if the UPA decided to go through with what, at the moment, seems like a rash and harsh decision.

Perhaps we shouldn’t say anything in order to avoid alienating any of the parties involved but we wanted you, the readers, to know that we’re on the case to get the story from all involved. Good luck to all teams searching for sanctioned games.